Trouble Is My Business
by brianoftheforest
Summary: Jim and McCoy's friendship revolves around one little phrase.


_Trouble is my business._

Boarding the shuttle in Iowa, McCoy wasn't thinking straight. He had been a little drunk. Okay, maybe a lot. Of course, nasty divorces and shit like that could do wonders to a man. What the hell was he doing? He's a doctor, not some twenty-first century astronaut. His feet belong planted firmly on the ground, not blasting off to God-knows-where doing God-knows-what.

And then of course, once he meets Jim Kirk there's no going back. Especially after Leonard reveals his entire life story in a drunken stupor that the doctor only vaguely remembers the day after.

Apparently threatening to puke in his lap gives the idiot license to barge into Leonard's dorm at any hour of the night, sporting various bruises and calling him "Bones." But McCoy can't just turn him down. Even if it meant dealing with an angry roommate and vomit-soaked bathroom, the poor kid had nowhere else to go, and McCoy knows what that felt like.

The first time he hears the phrase, he can't stop his eyebrow from shooting up to his hairline. Jim is describing how he drove his step-father's car off a cliff, obviously embellishing the high-speed chase with the police bike. Leonard knows it's exaggerated because he's been to Iowa, and they don't have curvy roads.

"Trouble is my business, Bones," Jim says with a grin.

Bones just rolls his eyes and snorts. But that night, when the kid comes knocking at his door with a split temple, he begins to take this catch phrase a bit more seriously.

* * *

_Trouble is my business._

It becomes the mantra of his life. Wherever Jim Kirk goes, blood, sweat and tears soon follow, ending the night with split knuckles and breath smelling like alcohol and more often that not a pool of vomit on the floor.

Leonard learns to just roll with it whenever Jim gets that devilish twinkle in his eye. So he tags along to whatever backwater bar the idiot dug up this time, if only to provide damage control.

Bones drags the kid back to his quarters, ignoring a cussing roommate who wakes enough to toss a pillow in their general direction then angrily shove his face underneath another. Leonard shuts the bathroom door before the swearing can get obnoxiously loud, grimacing as Jim retches into the toilet.

Thankfully, it wasn't his lap, this time.

When Jim finally finishes, he perches himself on the lid of the toilet while Leonard grabs the med kit from inside the cabinet. McCoy cleans the kid's wounds carefully, methodically, like an artist would paint a canvas, and with no less gentleness and care.

Jim sniffs, and McCoy knows it isn't from the pain.

"They were right, y'know," Jim slurs, absentmindedly. Bones looks up from the regenerator, but Jim isn't meeting his gaze. "I'm nothing like my father."

"No, you're not," Leonard agrees quietly.

That startles Jim, who finally looks and Bones with a confused and hurt expression on his face.

Bones doesn't hesitate to clarify. "You're an entirely different person; with your own likes and dislikes, and just because your old man was George Kirk doesn't change a thing."

"But didn't you hear what they said? He saved _everyone _on his ship. I can't live up to that. Why did I even come here? How can I become something of my own when _he's _always lurking in the background?" Jim is rambling now, the drunken stupor he's wallowing in letting all these hidden emotions flow to the surface. Leonard almost doesn't know what to say.

"How can anyone live up to somebody like—ow." Jim winces when the antiseptic comes into contact with his broken nose, momentarily torn out of his ranting.

Bones shrugs. "So save an entire planet, and actually live to tell the tale," he supplies.

Jim says nothing, eyes staring blearily ahead. His stillness allows Leonard to finish with the rest of his small cuts and bruises.

"Thanks, Bones." It's quiet, almost too soft for Leonard to hear.

He doesn't need to ask what for. They both know what it feels like to be alone.

"Sure, Jim."

* * *

Jim's gone by the time Leonard wakes up in the morning, curled on the small couch at one end of the room, listening to a furious roommate stomp into the bathroom.

The fifth (or sixth or seventh) time this happens, Leonard finds himself without a bed to sleep in. Conveniently, Jim's roommate moved out that morning so he ends up tossing his stuff onto the spare bed. He's pretty sure Jim orchestrated the entire thing, but his only thought is _Why didn't __they__ think of this sooner?_

The arrangement results in more sleepless nights than he would like to count, but somebody's got to look after the kid, and his dead father sure ain't going to do it.

* * *

_Trouble is my business._

Now, he's running for his life through a forest of brightly colored foliage with a small army of spear-throwing natives hot on his tail.

He says he hates it, but on the other hand he doesn't think he minds too much, because this is the first sense of normalcy he's felt since Narada.

And then Starfleet is attacked.

And Pike dies.

And Jim retreats behind a wall so thick and dark even Bones has a hard time getting through.

There is a fine line between troublesome and dangerous, and Leonard is scared out of his mind that Jim will go too far over the edge, and Bones can't make it better.

Things get a bit better, if only for a moment. Embarrassing Jim in front of his entire senior command was one of the best moments of life. For a second it feels like they are back at the Academy, with nothing more to worry about than the Kobayashi Maru.

The door slams on his arm. Pain laces up into his shoulder when he jumps, but he can't move, his hand effectively trapped inside the torpedo. It only takes a second for his attention to snap from his pain to the blonde struggled on the opposite side.

"Jim, get her out of here now!" His voice sounds a million times calmer than he really is.

She's so young. Happy. He's the grumpy old doctor who only finds enjoyment in stabbing people with hypos. She is at the peak of life while he's rotting away. He has experienced things she hasn't, and the thought that she may never get the chance tears him to pieces.

Ten, nine, eight...He starts counting down. He can't help it. There's only so much time and he desperately wants to scream, _Dammit Jim, f__orget __about __me, save her! Save her! Save her! _

"Shit!"

And then the door releases and he collapses back onto the rough ground, taking huge, gasping lungfuls of sweet, sweet oxygen.

The timer has stopped and he is still alive.

Jim is waiting for them when they land the shuttle. Bones barely steps out the hatch when the idiot smothers him into a hug, unknowingly reigniting the fire in his bad arm. Leonard doesn't mind too much. He lets Jim be, until the pain becomes almost unbearable, and then allows himself a small sound of protest.

Dr. Marcus calls for the captain from across the room, but Jim shakes his head and proceeds to escort Bones to sickbay.

"The torpedoes aren't going anywhere," he tells her. Bones doesn't miss the _thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou_ that goes unsaid.

They're talking, alone in sickbay, after M'Benga patches up McCoy's arm, when he says it. He didn't mean to, but the phrase slipped out before he could stop himself.

"Trouble is my business," Leonard comments with a shrug.

Jim looks at him sharply, a chorus of emotions crossing over his face in the span of a second. First bewilderment and shock which slowly transform into amusement, breaking his face into a smile. And then Jim laughs, the first genuinely happy sound he has made in what feels like years.

It's bordering on hysterical, but Bones finds himself chuckling along with him, and they are still rolling with laughter when Dr. Marcus wheels in that damned torpedo.

* * *

_Trouble is my business. _

It's funny, how after hearing that phrase so many times, McCoy never thought he would hear the end of it.

But he's wrong, and he hates himself for it.

Bones has never fully understood the meaning of _O__nly the good die young_ until now. Because Jim _was _a good man, and nobody could convince him otherwise. Jim Kirk saved his ship, and the lives of her crew at the cost of his own.

Leonard has heard a story like this before, only the name _Jim_ was replaced with _George. _

Suddenly he has trouble breathing. He steps back from the table where his best friend lies in a _body ba__g—__oh, God, __please __no—_and staggers away.

There's something warm and wet sliding down Leonard's cheek as a thousand images flash at warp speed before his eyes. Jim on the shuttle, all bruised and beaten and looking no better than McCoy felt, Jim bursting in one night with the name "Bones," on his lips and alcohol on his breath, Jim's expression with a surprise hypo pressed to his neck, Jim showing off his golden command uniform.

Jim, lying on the table, as if sleeping off the drugs from another multi-hour surgery.

Only he wasn't sleeping.

Not this time.

* * *

He barely sees it out of the corner of his eye.

Movement.

And then there's hope.

* * *

**Can you tell I like line breaks? No? Huh, thought it would've been obvious...**

**SOOOO this was my entry for a one-shot challenge over at TBB. The prompt was "Trouble is my business." It sounded like Jim and Bones, so WHY THE HECKLES NOT? (heckles. heh. yeeeeah sorry)  
**

**And as usual, a HUGE thank you to the crew at TBB for helping me out. You guys rock. **


End file.
